


To Be Loved

by Purplesauris



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, I had a lot of feelings and so did geralt, Inspired by Music, M/M, mentions of Eskel and Lambert, mentions of geralt's mom, mentions of shrike/renfri, muddied feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28277478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purplesauris/pseuds/Purplesauris
Summary: He is a beast, and to love is to be defenseless. He won’t let anyone close enough to wound him again, to drive their nails deep into his chest and rend the soft, weak flesh they find there.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	To Be Loved

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely inspired by To Be Loved by Askjell ft AURORA- particularly the line "In my heart, I'm the half of a whole/And it's making me feel so alone"

Geralt doesn’t remember the first to love him well. His memories are murky at best sometimes- they twist and slip away from him when he reaches to grasp at them, crying out in the dark for something to be there. Something  _ real _ . He feels the phantom of a woman’s fingers sliding through his hair in his sleep, carding through locks that have long since faded from the russet brown he remembered. The scent of wood and hay and magic strangles him those nights and he wakes up gasping and gripping at his hair until pain sings through him. In a room full of other boys his age it’s a feat in itself to hide the tightness that crushes his chest and steals his breath, and when the memory of fingers in his hair slips away, lost among the haze in his head, he’s grateful. 

Geralt’s second love is chaos- a whirlwind of words and feelings and the sense of  _ being _ . She understands him in a way he doesn’t comprehend- they’re two sides of the same twisted, ruined coin, and each glance toward her is a glance inward. Each touch of her hands on his skin sends shivers over him, and the kiss of her blade is a betrayal. He sees himself in every parry and thrust and shriek of steel as they come together, bloodied and fighting to  _ be _ . Her arms come around him in a lover’s embrace when his blade strikes true, and the hot-cold washing over him while he’s pelted with stones, hissing and snarling and trying to keep others from her makes his head spin. Each stone striking him, every harsh word thrown at him wraps like a python around his heart and squeezes, and he disappears, leaving a part of him behind.

He has no third love. No matter how Destiny yanks and pulls and shoves him, no matter the people who walk into his life, eyes soft and hands held out to him in supplication. He is a beast, and to love is to be defenseless. He won’t let anyone close enough to wound him again, to drive their nails deep into his chest and rend the soft, weak flesh they find there. He sticks to the Path, and even when his family touches him, smiles at him and welcomes him back home he shies away. He hides the smiles that used to shine too bright, keeps back words that before he would have thrown out just to piss Lambert off. He hides his wicked, beastly heart behind adamant walls and lets no one climb over. He doesn’t winter with his brothers for years after, wandering the snow covered landscape like a wraith searching for a lover. The beast within him prowls, snarling and snapping, and slowly, Geralt begins to heal.

He winters again after five years away, and the punch that Lambert rightly breaks his nose with is a fiery confession of  _ love. _ It scalds Geralt’s veins, renders him to ash, and he finds himself letting those adamant walls down. Allowing Lambert to see him, to see the monster inside of him, and recoiling when Lambert nods his head as if to say  _ I see you, I accept you- no matter the blood on your jaws. _ It isn’t the same- isn’t the all encompassing whirlwind of his Shrike, but it’s deeper- a bond forged through the fires of acid running in their veins. The gentle, kind fingers that reset his nose brim with energy, and Geralt finds himself battered, pinned as the cool acceptance of Eskel’s care sweeps through him. Washes the ash and grit and blood from him until his adamant walls shine like mirrors. Until the fiery passion and cool caring of his brothers reflects back at them in simple gestures. A helping hand for chores, an outlet for rage when neither of them can sleep, toy soldiers wound too tight to do anything but destroy. 

His walls stay down only for them, and when they split in the spring it’s stronger than ever, bolstered in force. Geralt walks his own Path as he always has, until he stops at the wrong bar- witnesses Destiny’s cruel strings tightening around him once again, snagging in his skin and pulling him in a thousand directions. The bard sees him and does not stop looking, following him with eyes like an ocean and heart very clearly on his sleeve. Love bleeds and drips from him in every word, every action, and Geralt wants  _ desperately. _ Wonders and rages and cries out in agony at the world he cannot have, that he must observe from afar, that he  _ does not deserve _ . He builds his wall higher, thicker, though with each kind word, each night spent curled around someone so warm he can feel the outer layer begin to crumble. 

_ I deserve no one, and want no one to deserve me. _

He will have no third love. He shoves and drags himself back, away from that edge, that razor sharp precipice. He is set adrift, alone in a sea of blood spilled. He is coated in it, wakes up drowning in it and sinking further when fingers card through his hair, calluses rough against his skin. He can feel his own traitor heart stretching out clawed hands- ripping and rending and tearing at the defenses he so carefully put in place so long ago. The animal in him, long held in check, begins to prowl again, to sniff and scratch at the bottom of the wall as if digging far enough would uproot it completely. Geralt can only hold out from an onslaught of such magnitude for so long, and the day it finally shatters something in him breaks with it. His heart weeps in his chest, an ugly, misshapen thing, and Geralt has nothing to protect it with. 

The bard doesn’t seem to notice the sharp edges, doesn't care about the rivers of blood that soon coat his hands and run over his feet when he steps closer. Doesn’t smell the decay that hangs from Geralt’s soul, shrouds him and sends others careening away from him. He merely smiles, holding Geralt’s lonely, battered heart and stealing it away like a jewel. Geralt feels Destiny’s strings biting into his skin, binding the two of them together, and this time when he finds himself slipping for that edge, he takes a breath. And  _ leaps _ . 


End file.
